The firmware of a computer platform has traditionally been seen as a single entity that is packaged as a single image. More recently, some computer platforms have established separate firmware components. For example, the Itanium Processor Family (IPF) standard establishes a Processor Abstraction Layer (PAL), a System Abstraction Layer (SAL), and an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) as separate firmware components.
At least some firmware architectures (e.g., “Banyan”) are able to divide a firmware component such as SAL into several distinct sub-components. At least some of these distinct sub-components can be updated during runtime of the associated computer platform. Also, new distinct sub-components can be added